When a restaurant is to serve sliced food items, such as sliced tomatoes, a substantial amount of preparation time would be required at the restaurant to slice and otherwise prepare the sliced products. After the food products are purchased and delivered to the restaurant, typically they would have to be cleaned, sliced, and made available for placement on the salad, sandwich, or other menu item. It is somewhat difficult for the person slicing the food items to prepare slices of uniform width and consistency and there is a substantial amount of waste because of improper slicing, etc. and there is the potential for cross contamination in the restaurant.
In the instance of fast food restaurant chains, the owners of the restaurant chain usually desire to present a uniform food product, such as hamburgers of uniform size, appearance and taste, with sliced tomatoes applied to the hamburgers, and with the hamburgers and all of the ingredients being substantially identical from one restaurant to another. It has become important that tomatoes, in particular, be sliced to a desired thickness when placed on sandwiches, salads, etc. of a restaurant of a chain of fast food restaurants. This provides the customer with confidence that the food products will be uniform from one restaurant to another within a chain of the restaurants. Accordingly, restaurant managers now prefer to receive food items in proper configuration and condition for placement on a sandwich, salad, etc., for immediate service to the customer without requiring the preliminary preparation steps such as slicing the food products.
Manual handling of slices of tomatoes, such as described above, adds to potential public health issues from contamination and adds to the potential of bruising the products and liquid loss from the products.
It is therefore desirable that the design and operation of a tomato slicer take into consideration the delicate nature of the tomato, the importance of minimizing the impact of the slicer on the tomatoes, the cleanliness of the equipment performing the slicing process, and the speed of operation of the slicer.
Various prior art slicing machines have been disclosed for the purpose of slicing food products. The prior art includes U.K. Patent Specification 600,131 dated Sep. 28, 1945 that discloses a slicer that would push potatoes through parallel cutter wires to form the potatoes into a pair of end slices and a plurality of intermediate slices of uniform thickness. The end slices are to be collected separately from the intermediate slices.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,799,496 discloses a slicing device similar to the U.K. potato slicer that would simultaneously push a plurality of tomatoes through parallel reciprocating cutter blades.
U.S. patent publications 2006/0021484 and 2006/0225547 disclose article slicers and methods suitable for slicing tomatoes and other relatively soft articles into parallel slices while discarding the heel portions and the stem portions of the bodies of the articles.
Publication 2006/0225547 discloses an article slicer with fluid cleaning of some of the surfaces and an external pick and placer that may be aligned with the slicer to place tomatoes in the slicer.
It is a problem with some prior art article slicers to effectively and efficiently clean the surfaces of the slicer during operation and after operation of the slicer. For example, when the slicer is used to slice tomatoes and other articles that leave a residue on the surfaces of the slicer, the parts may have to be disassembled, cleaned and reassembled.
A desired feature of article slicers is the cleaning of the equipment after the equipment has been used without having to disassemble the slicer. It is desirable to remove any particles, such as the skin of a tomato, seeds or other residue, and the juices exuded from the articles during the slicing and handling operations, and it is desirable to apply a disinfectant to the surfaces of the equipment that make contact with the articles so that the equipment is sanitized before reuse.
Another desired feature for article slicers is the feeding of the articles, such as tomatoes, to the slicer in sufficient quantity and in the proper pattern that matches the intake requirements of the slicer for maximizing the operational speed of the slicer without reducing the quality of the work product.
It is these features and problems that this invention addresses.